The Nemu Jigsaw
by frozenpixie
Summary: A Nemu/Grimmjow pairing, just because I can. Not a crackfic, just nice, slightly twisted fluff. Read it, you might like it. You just know you're curious. Oh, and please review.


**This is 90% fluff, with some violence, bad language, slightly mature situations and mentions of torture etc. Just a warning since I don't think it's bad enough to be M but I don't want people to walk in unprepared. Please read and review.**

When it came to fighting, Grimmjow Jaegerjacques was not much of a thinker. Heck, if it moved, he stabbed it, he wasn't much for planning and subtle deliberation. The same went for women. Any woman would do, the hotter the better, but really, if it was there, he would do it. But even for Grimmjow, there was always an exception. Every now and then, an exception to the rule came along. In battle, it was Ichigo Kurosaki. He had saved the man's life just for that sensation of pumping bloodlust, just for the thrill of the challenge, where normally, if it didn't move, it didn't need killing, and he just went off to find something else to pummel. Ichigo was special.

It was the same with Kurotsuchi Nemu. She was not interested. She was not available. He had seen reams of women hotter, sexier and more enticing than her. But somehow, she was his one exception. She was an enigma, so quiet and unresponsive to his coarse language and careless harassment, a bad habit rather than any particular malice towards her as his gaoler.

Perhaps it was because she wasn't sentimental. She never smiled at him, or apologised for all the horrendous things her father was doing to him, the last surviving espada, but he felt her gentle sadness, and noticed that he was being tortured for fewer hours per day, that there was more and better food on his plate, and that his one ragged blanket had been increased to two, then three, and finally replaced with a cosy ice blue quilt embroidered with silver snowflakes. She never spoke a word to him, gave no indication she had anything to do with the subtle changes, never spoke words of sorrow of comfort to him, never retaliated to his taunts.

He dwelt on his silent keeper endlessly in the extended nighttime of his cell. It reminded him of Hueco Mundo in the small, bare room; with only one pale semicircular crescent letting the daylight pour in. He thought of her porcelain face as he watched the little crescent moon of light shift slowly from one side of his cell to the other. What was she, this silent girl, that her image was burned onto his eyelids and the scent of her which clung to his quilt sent spasms of emotion through his body? Why was it that he wanted more than anything to hear her voice. He imagined it low and clear, almost musical, like a melancholic bell striking above a moonlit courtyard. He kicked the wall whenever these poncy romantic images invaded his head. It must be the side effect of the drugs that triangular-headed freak kept pumping into his system.

One day when she came in, silent as a ghost, with his meal on a tray, he didn't make his usual bawdy, insulting comments, but surveyed her from his horizontal position, reclining on his bed.

"What's your name, woman?" he asked her. She looked up at him, startled, with her leaf green eyes. It was the first time he had looked her in the eye, and he was disconcerted to see how large and sweet they were, like pools of water in the spring. Dammit, it had happened again. Since when had he ever thought in poetry and junk? But her reply distracted him.

"Kurotsuchi Fukutaichou," she told him meekly, bowing her head slightly, so her long, dark fringe fell forwards into her eyes. Grimmjow frowned. It was the first time he had heard her speak, but-

"That's your title. I asked your name. D'ya even have a name?" The girl's eyes darted to meet his again, just for an instant, then fluttered downwards again.

"Nemu," she murmured. Grimmjow shivered. The way she spoke the word, like it was a foreign tongue, slightly stilted, uncertain. Like it was the first time anyone had ever asked her to speak the word.

"'s pretty," he said carelessly, and was astonished as a faint pink blush crept over her pale cheeks. Like a drop of blood in milk... Shit, no, not like anything. What did he care if she blushed? It wasn't like it was a proper compliment, just a throwaway comment. But the kind word had animated her face, and he found himself drinking in the subtle change. A shy human child was peeking out from behind the demure surface. It was enchanting.

"I've never heard you speak before," he threw at her, his voice harsh to compensate for his moment of weakness. "You afraid of me, Nemu?" He tried not to cherish the sound of her name on his tongue.

"I am not afraid of you. It is you who are at my mercy." Grimmjow stared at the girl, astonished at the words which had just come from between those soft, silent lips. "Are you afraid of me, Grimmjow Jaegerjacques?"

"What? Hell, no. I could take you out in a heartbeat. You shinigami are all pathetic," he responded, automatically on the defensive. But when she had gone, without another word or glance, he thought about what she had said. He was at her mercy. Was he afraid of her? He didn't understand her. He had never been required to understand a person before. If it didn't make sense, it wasn't his problem. Now, he found himself wanting to understand. Or maybe he just wanted to hear her voice again. It had been even better than he had imagined; low, sweet and clear, with a hint of sadness which made it all the more attractive.

The next two weeks passed without any more words spoken between the two. He would gruffly accept his food – which often came now with a little luxury, like a small bunch of grapes or a few squares of chocolate – and she would come and go silently, never removing her gaze from the dull grey floor. He thought this routine might go on forever, and it drove him crazy, that he looked forward to these brief, mundane moments. But then Grimmjow got sick, and things changed.

It was inevitable, really, that with all the tests and experiments being performed on him, sooner or later his body would protest, react badly to the cocktails of drugs being pumped through his system to gauge his reactions. It came on suddenly, during his morning hours of labtime. Strapped upright, the psycho's hands wrist-deep in his lower intestines, a sudden wave of dizziness swept through him, and the world went black. He was fucking blind. Strapped to the wall with his guts spilling out and his eyesight totally wrecked. Usually he gave up on screaming, the captain made sure he felt no pain, during these sessions, at least, because the writhing and yelling interfered with his concentration. Now however, he let out a roar like a wounded beast and a string of panicked profanities spewed from his lips. Then the coughing started. A tickle at first, then a series of dry, hacking coughs which shook his entire body, burning his chest and lungs. Minutes later the fever kicked in, sweat pouring off him, his body wracked with shivers.

He didn't have the chance to register what was going on, or what had gone wrong, his symptons were so sudden and so severe that he went from conscious and alert to death's door in approximately five minutes. The hazy journey between consciousness and sleep, hounded by pain and dizziness in both directions, could have lasted mere minutes for him, but when he finally came to, it had been five days. He was tucked into his blue-covered bed, with gentle hands brushing the hair back from his forehead and bathing it with a damp cloth. She didn't realise he was awake, and she was talking to him. Such strange words, but in a soothing voice which he realised had been with him all the while, staving away some of the pain and dizziness. His life changed, because, unguarded, he was invited past the silent, shy exterior of the enigmatic girl and into her thoughts. He found himself drinking in the words.

"-father thinks that it was the third set of drugs reacting to the high levels of hollow particles in your bloodstream which set off the reaction, and he wanted to give you some more to see if it was, but I pointed out that if he did it would kill you, and that he wouldn't be able to do nearly so many interesting experiments on a corpse. Of course, father often works with corpses, but I don't think you'd be nearly so interesting if you were dead. Your eyeballs would decompose within the first seventy hours, and I enjoy the fact that you have eyes, they are remarkably alive and expressive. Father shouted at me, of course, but he did let me take care of you. Actually he made me take care of you and locked me down here and threatened to give me drugs to make all my hair fall out if you died, but it doesn't matter, because I like being down here with you. You feel like you're listening to me, even if you can't hear me, and I think my voice soothes you, especially when I sing. Would you like me to sing to you now? You seem-"

"I'd like it if you sang," Grimmjow rasped, and the girl broke off her sentence and shot out of her seat so fast that she was a blur. Turning his head laboriously, he only caught a flash of white as her long, bare legs carried her out of the door. Crap, he thought, I scared her off. Then, she _sang _to me? Why did the feeling leave him so warm? Then, unconsciousness again, this time without the soft, sweet words of Nemu.

When he woke again, her gentle hands were back, and he opened his eyes a crack, slowly, so as not to startle her. She had a blooming bruise across her left cheek, but she looked calm and contented. She noticed he was awake this time, and gave him a timid smile.

"I am sorry I ran away and left you," she said, and her voice sounded slightly happier than he remembered from their first conversation. "I was startled by your words, I had anticipated that you would sleep at least another ten hours before your system was sufficiently recovered for consciousness, but I underestimated your hollow powers of regeneration. I expect you will be fully recovered in just a few more days."

"You're hurt," Grimmjow murmured. "Is that because you left?"

"Father was not pleased. I broke through the barriers he set up to get out, without even trying. He did not care that you were untended, but he does not like it when I am more powerful than him." Grimmjow was going to say 'what a bastard', then recalled that he was much the same and let out a low grunt of amusement and irritation.

"You're much less reserved around me now," he observed, a little roughly. He coughed once, and winced. "Guess I'm not so scary when I'm weak as a freakin' kitten."

"I have grown use to your presence, and you responded to the sound of my voice. It helped me to heal you, talking."

"And singing," Grimmjow said, and it came out a lot less mocking that he had intended. Even wistful. His own cheeks darkened a little at the tone of his voice, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Only the soft sound of his breathing could be heard for a few seconds.

"Would you still like me to sing to you?" Nemu asked softly. Grimmjow looked at her, and saw that her cheeks too were faintly pink from embarrassment. "It helped to calm you when you were in a fever, but it seemed to soothe you even when you were still." Grimmjow knew that he should be enraged at being treated like a child, but there was something so different about Nemu. She was not patronising him. It seemed like a reasonable request, coming from her. Something practical, but invitingly intimate at the same time. And a shamefully large part of him wanted to hear that sweet, gentle voice lifted in song.

"What did you sing?" he asked, suppressing a cough. Nemu darted him a quick glance, and began to sing a soft, haunting melody. The words flowed into each other, and he did not know the tongue, but it was so beautiful that he listened, spellbound, until it was over. Nemus darted another shy glance at him and blushed when she saw that he was staring, jaw slack.

"It is from the world of the living. It's called Die Lorelei, about a beautiful maiden who lures sailors in with her singing and wrecks their ships on the rocks. It's a poem, but I prefer to sing the words."

"It's..." he wanted to say beautiful, haunting, even fitting, but the words wouldn't come. "Thanks." Nemu smiled, a genuine, wide, dazzling smile, and Grimmjow blinked in its paralysing beam.

"You are very welcome," she said.

If anyone else had sat with Grimmjow, and talked about all the little mundane life things that went on in their homes, he would have been bored rigid, and his hand would have been through their chest cavity before they could so much as blink. With Nemu, though, Grimmjow found himself hanging on every word, fascinated by her viewpoint on the happenings of the Soul Society, even laughing at her funny descriptions of all the shinigami captains and vice-captains. She didn't even realise how amusing she was when she seriously deliberated where Renji had disappeared to for four hours when he was supposed to be doing paperwork.

"He came back looking very flustered and told Kuchiki-taichou that he had been training," she said earnestly. "And when Urahara-san pointed out to him that his shirt was inside out and that he better take better care of his clothing if he wanted to keep what was underneath it in working order considering who it was he had been 'training' with, he went bright red and yelled at Urahara-san for the pot not to call the kettle black, and that he and Yoruichi-sama were not as discreet as they thought they were. Why are you laughing, Grimmjow?"

"Well he was clearly off boinking that Rukia chick, and Urahara and Yoruichi are clearly at it too," Grimmjow snorted.

"Is boinking the same as training, and why is this a cause for anger or embarrassment?" Nemu asked.

"Uh, it's kind of the same, but with less clothes, and usually less violence," Grimmjow grinned. Nemu nodded.

"So I boink with Yachiru-san and Ise-san on the beach?"

"Oh I freaking wish," Grimmjow muttered to himself. Out loud, he said, "Naw, I think you'd call that playing. I wouldn't say 'boink' around anyone else if I were you."

"Then why did you say it to me?"

"Because I'm rude. And you're special." Nemu blushed. He loved it when she blushed. He hated it when he caught himself loving it.

He was disappointed when his body had recovered enough for tests to resume, not because he particularly cared about the shit being done with his body, he had had plenty of that with Aizen-sama, but because it limited the time he could spend with Nemu. He didn't even bother to tell himself that he only bothered to speak to her to gather news of the outside world, after a few days, because he might have been a bastard, but he was honest, even to himself, and he knew he just liked to hear what she had to say, because it was her saying it. She was appointed other duties, and he only saw her for maybe an hour a day altogether, because she lingered as long as possible when she brought his meals. Any longer, she said, and her father would notice that she was neglecting her work. The girl was cunning, though, and he discovered two weeks later that she had managed to wear her father down, and convince him that to truly see the espada's powers, he must watch him in action. The outcome of this was that Mayuri had 'demanded' that Nemu engage in combat with the espada to test his abilities, and record the sessions for him to review. For a naive girl, Nemu sure was clever, and for a clever man, Mayuri sure was naive. It was clear that Grimmjow's little enigma had a lot of spirit hidden away, and that although she let Mayuri dominate her, she knew exactly how to get her way when she wanted it. Grimmjow loved finding out all these little things, tiny pieces of the Nemu-jigsaw. He didn't even bother reprimanding himself for being into all that psychological shit. It just plain delighted him to see that she had a devious side. And she knew him, too, because she knew that he would give his left arm (again) for a good fight.

It didn't particularly strike him as odd that he was actually anticipating this, that he was capable of anticipating any part of his existence in Soul Society, now that his world had been torn asunder. Grimmjow was not one to look back, but to live for the moment, look to the next challenge, but never the one beyond that, and he took this new situation in his stride. He didn't give a toss that he was a prisoner, and that this fight was a stage so that a cracked shinigami scientist could gather data on an extinct race. He would just enjoy being able to move again, to fight again, and to see what else Kurotsuchi Nemu had hidden away in that unfathomable mind of hers. Ye gods, he was actually thinking about her mind. Like women were anything more than a plaything. What was that about? The word 'friend' was not in his vocabulary, much less 'respect'. Or it hadn't been until he had looked into her deep, wide eyes, and yearned to know what else was behind them.

Still, he grinned cockily as he squared off against Nemu, whose face was expressionless apart from the steely sheen to her pond-green eyes which spoke of her determination. It felt a little odd to be wearing loose black shinigami pants rather than his espada uniform and open cropped jacket, but the feel of his zanpakuto in his hand was all he needed to feel at home in any situation. His grin widened as Nemu's slender fingers curled around the hilt of her own weapon. She drew it with a soft, dangerous sound of sleek metal, and he almost barked out a laugh at having thought of the words 'Nemu' and 'dangerous' in the same sentence.

"Don't worry," he called out to her arrogantly. "I'm not going to fight to kill."

"Do not underestimate my abilities. To gain accurate results you must fight to your fullest ability. Aim to terminate my life. I shall be attempting the same objective." Grimmjow's eyes widened in surprise.

"You'd kill me in the name of research?" he asked, wrongfooted. He had thought the girl was too soft on him to have it in her. Not that she could touch him if she tried.

"Of course," she said. "I would regret the loss of your company, but my first loyalty is to my father, and he requires validity of research. We will be fighting to kill." Grimmjow struggled with a new concept struggling to the surface of his mind.

"I don't... want to kill you," he strangled out. Nemu bobbed her head.

"You will not be able to kill me. I will win this fight." Grimmjow snorted his disbelief.

"No offence, Nemu, but you really couldn't so much as scratch me."

"Then this will be our first test. Use your pre-release form to attack me, and we will see who draws first blood. Do not hold back." Before Grimmjow could argue, Nemu disappeared, and reappeared in the blink of an eye just behind him. He raised his sword automatically to block her strike. Well, maybe he could give her a little scratch, just to show who was boss. Parrying her blow, he struck out with less than his usual force, but enough to send her stumbling backwards. Except she didn't. She easily blocked his attack, and flashed in front of him so that he was obliged to hastily raise his sword again.

"I told you not to hold back," she scolded mildly. Grimmjow ground his teeth, and put a little more energy into the fight. This was going to be more fun than he had thought.

Three minutes later he was grinning widely, the warm feeling in his chest put down to the joy of a good fight, but at least a little to do with the growing admiration he had for Nemu as an opponent. She was fast, she was sneaky, and she was strong enough to block even his more forceful attacks. He actually had to try a little to fend her off. Still, he didn't need to embarrass the girl by actually using his full power and knocking her flat in a second. Nemu's face was still serious, though her eyes showed mild enjoyment.

"You are still not attacking me with your full strength," she told him. "I will have to show you that it will be necessary to get past my defences. You have been unwittingly on the defensive since the beginning of our fight." Grimmjow realised she was right. He had only defended against her attacks, never instigated his own. Maybe he could give it a bit more power now, if it was an invitation. Raising his sword, he charged the slight shinigami, raining a swift round of blows. He was slightly impressed that she blocked them all without even having to move her feet. He redoubled his efforts. She still seemed undisturbed. Grin widening, Grimmjow began to use a few more complex moves, firing a cero at point blank range. Nemo not only blocked it but responded with her own kido. Not only responded, but she overwhelmed his attack, her kido surprising him, and her crafty swordwork managing to put him on the defensive again. Maybe he had underestimated her skill.

"You're pretty good," he told her. "I may actually have to work up a little bit of a sweat to beat you."

"I hope that means the fight will become more interesting. Your moves have so far been quite pedestrian and uninteresting. I have barely had to think." Grimmjow scowled. He did not like to be insulted, especially if he was being called boring.

"All right, you asked for it," he snarled. He was certain he saw the ghost of a smile as he rounded on Nemu again. Bringing his not inconsiderable skill into play, he knew he could have her on the ground in mere minutes. If that was what she wanted to see, then so be it. His zanpakuto arced, disconcertingly gracefully, through the air, and he landed a light blow to the side of where her face had been a split second before. His brow furrowed, and he lookd around. She was behind him, grinning. With a growl, he sped up his attack. He was still unable to land a blow, and she was deflecting his attempts seemingly without effort. How was she doing this? It was impossible, even after almost six weeks without practice. He began attacking in earnest, aiming to land proper blows. He thought she was working a bit harder now to fend him off, but she was still completely unscathed, not even breathing hard. After a while, she flashed back from the conflict and surveyed Grimmjow clinically.

"This has been interesting to experience. I will draw blood now, Grimmjow." His eyes widened. She thought she could touch him?

"Isn't that what you've been trying to do?" he asked. His one arrogant consolation had been that she had not been able to touch him, either.

"No. I was allowing you time to warm up so that father could gather data. It would not be useful if you were beaten in three seconds flat. But I wish to move on to the next stage soon."

"Bring it on, then," Grimmjow challenged.

She moved like a bird, flitting and lashing out, always a bit out of reach, her moves just that bit unpredictable. For Grimmjow, who moved on instinct, her fighting style was frustrating, always one step out of reach.

"Stop running away," he growled. To his surprise, she obliged, and her fighting became more aggressive. He was working hard to hold her off, and she moved like lightening, so that he found himself catching her blows only centimetres from his body. After a few minutes, she managed to worm her way past his defences, changing the pattern she had somehow lured him into. He felt the warm blood spilling down his cheek, and raised his hand to his face. His fingers came away coated in the scarlet liquid. He looked at Nemu in disbelief. Her face was calm and emotionless.

"I have first blood, but I anticipate that you will do better than me in the next round. Your reiatsu is very strong, even when suppressed by your presence in Soul Society. You may now release your zanpakuto at will, and aim to damage me in any way you wish."

"You bet I will," Grimmjow leered. He wanted to up the stakes. The fun was just beginning. She may be a more worthy opponent than he had thought, but with Pantera, she would not last two minutes. His fighting spirit had taken over, and he was no longer concerned about hurting her. She may be enchanting, but fighting was what he was. Grinning, he adopted his release form.

"Grind, Pantera." At the same time, Nemu called her zanpakuto into release.

"Bring death, Mikazuki." He watched as he placed both palms on the hilt of her zanpakuto, tugging in two directions as it transformed into two curved scythes as long as her forearms. Compared to his lithe, catlike form, it was not particularly threatening. Sure enough, he found he had the immediate advantage in strength and speed in attacking, and her curved swords were no match for his claws. In under two minutes he had her pinned down on the floor, but to his surprise, she clashed her swords together and created a dense ball of energy which she threw at him, catching him off guard.

"You cheated," he complained as he picked himself up off the floor.

"I never specified that I would not fight dirty," she informed him. The fight got a lot more interesting after that. It was like a dance where neither person could quite remember the steps, so that both invented their own, their partner swiftly adapting to fit in with the new pattern. Unfortunately for Grimmjow, Nemu was a good dancer. What she lacked in strength she made up for in sheer creativity, causing him to work hard for his victory, and even bring out his darts, which she managed to block, although he was sure that the weapons had knocked out a couple of Kurotsuchi's cameras. He didn't bother to let up the fight to tell her they no longer had company. He sent out another dart, and Nemu had no time to get out of the way. Bringing up her swords, she used the strangest technique Grimmjow had ever seen. She angled the blade just so, causing the strong attack to curve around like a boomerang bsck towards Grimmjow. At close range, he was obliged to block the brunt of the attack with his arms, taking a little damage from the incredible force. Nemu was smiling.

"Mikazuki is never predictable," she said coyly. "You let your guard down, Grimmjow."

Springing to his feet, Grimmjow did not let her press her advantage. If she was unpredictable, so could he be. His strength was not in fancy freaking attacks, it was in his fists, and he didn't appreciate having his own hard work used against him, although part of him admired her tricky methods.

Nemu saw him coming with wide eyes. She knew she was no match for his bare fists; none of her clever tricks would work at such close range, and with his increased strength and speed, she could not block him with 100% effectiveness. She had only one weapon left in her arsenal. Throwing her crescent-swords away in spinning arcs, she made sure she knocked out the two remaining cameras her father had instructed her to set up. Then, she employed the one technique not taught to her by her father, but by one of her female friends, Matsumoto, whose methods were generally bemusing but occasionally useful in certain conditions. She was certain that this was one of them. Nemu pulled open her robe, exposing her cleavage to the charging Grimmjow.

It did not work out quite as she planned, but nor did it work out as he had intended. It did not halt his charge, but once he had an exposed, panting woman underneath him, his fighting instinct suddenly had a very healthy libido to contend with. Nemu's shining eyes flicked up to his. The libido won. Lowering his mouth to her soft, pale pink lips, Grimmjow Jaegerjacques gave Nemu Kurotsuchi her first ever kiss. Again she had surprised him, but this was territory her was equally as comfortable with as with combat. Fighting with Nemu had been far more challenging, enjoyable and unpredictable than he had imagined. The thought of these same rules applying to something else with Nemu gave him very illicit thoughts, and his libido skyrocketed. It did not help that Nemu had chosen this moment to reach her hands up and play with his long, catlike ears. His body responded with rampant enthusiasm, and his hands wandered downwards. Nemu did not protest, but wiggled under him in a way which did not do much for his clarity of thought.

Things had progressed quite far by the time reality reasserted itself. Both of them were panting and shed of several artefacts of clothing. Grimmjow had returned to his usual form, with Nemu's soft white thighs either side of his waist and her bra draped over his bare shoulder. A deep purple lovebite was blossoming on her flawless collarbone, and Grimmjow's usually slick hair was messed up and dangling in his eyes.

"This is inadvisable," Nemu spoke breathily, pulling away from him. "This location is very public. I find myself reluctant to be discovered engaging in these activities." Grimmjow grinned widely at her quirky phrasing.

"That's half the fun," he purred into her neck, and she shuddered pleasurably,

"Nevertheless," she said. "Our allocated time is up, and I must bring the recordings to my father."

"You're going to give footage of us getting off together to your father?" Grimmjow asked incredulously. "I've heard of kinks, Nemu, but this is screwed up even by my standards." Nemu gave him a very crafty grin.

"I eliminated the cameras when I cast my swords away," she smirked. "And you took out the other ones earlier with your dart attack." Once you got past the shyness, she was devious as crap.

"Then can we please finish what we started?" he asked, painfully aware that women were far more able to disengage from things like this than men, even espada. "I'm having problems concentrating on much except how naked you are." Nemu blushed, and he was absurdly pleased that she was still as modest as ever.

"I will replace my clothing if you will pass it to me," she said primly. "And your concentration problems are not my concern. I must return to work." She replaced and straightened her uniform, and walked from the training ground, wavering and pausing to turn around and give the suffering espada a shy smile which drove him crazy.

"I have enjoyed our encounter, Grimmjow. I hope we can repeat it sometime. Although I find father's investigations stimulating, I find I have a desire to conduct my own experiments on you."

Damn, that girl shouldn't be able to do things like that to him. He was left standing half-naked in the courtyard, thinking longingly of the cold, cold water of the shower in his cell.

Three weeks, many steamy encounters and several fights later, Grimmjow found his life changing once again. To his disappointment, he found out that Nemu's idea of her own experiments on him were not restricted to bedroom activities. Then again, from such an unpredictable girl, he should have expected nothing less. She had managed to strike a deal with her father. He was absurdly pleased with the data he had collected from the fight, and Nemu had agreed to gain more information, specified by Mayuri, through further fights against the espada. With this data he had begun new projects which did not require the constant use of Grimmjow's body, working on his own creations which harnessed Grimmjow's hollow techniques, and extending his own powers using the footage to practice new techniques. With Mayuri pleased as punch, indebted to Nemu and preoccupied elsewhere, Nemu had managed to procure her own lab time with Grimmjow. He was incredibly turned on by her scientific approach to his body, which resulted in a lot of lab time being taken up with his favourite kind of research, but when Nemu put her foot down, he saw another side of her; her incredible intellect, which to his unlimited surprise he found just as thrilling as her fabulous body and her sweet-sly personality. For a while he had no idea what she was working on, only knowing that it was much less invasive and painful than Mayuri's research, and had very interesting side-benefits. When he finally caught on to the gist of her research, he knew he should have been furious. He knew it. It was an insult, an affront, a perversion of everything he was. But all he could do was marvel at her own peculiar brand of genius. She was modifying his DNA to prevent him from attacking the shinigami, in short programming him to be an ally of the Soul Society so that he would be released as a prisoner. He only caught on to this once he had been brought to trial in front of all 13 captains, and Nemu had laid out her research in that blunt, crystal-clear manner of hers.

It had not been his finest moment when he had howled like a wounded puppy that she was neutering him, leaving half the less mature captains in tears of laughter, but he had been freed with remarkably little fanfare, with a few stipulations, of course. He hated and loved being surprised by Nemu, but she was so wonderfully fascinating that he could not help but revel in her genius, especially when he found out that she had arranged his quarters to be directly opposite her own. His first night of freedom was the best night of his life, with the promise of not just the next challenge, the next encounter, but many after that, and it was not the freedom, or the prospect of fighting against hollows to his heart's content which left a permanent smile on his face.

"I know why I want you," he told her one night, holding her in his arms in a way he never would have imagined anyone but a cissy could find pleasant before he had tried it himself. "You're everything I want the most, all wrapped up in one hot little body. You're strong, you're smart, you like to fight and bone till we both ache, and you never cease to surprise me. You never bang on about boring shit, you look at me as if I own you, which is sexy as hell. Sometimes, you look at me as if you own me, which, frankly, is even sexier. You take my crap without complaining, but you somehow have a handle on me, which is hot, and which nobody except Ulquiorra has managed to have before, and he was not hot. Well, not very. Well, I prefer you. For all those reasons I want you. I don't think I'll ever get tired of any of the stuff we do together, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of doing it with you. But why do you want me, Nemu? I mean, I know I'm hot, but I'm an espada, I'm rude, I have a filthy temper and I'm not exactly what you'd call perfect partner material. I may have been genetically modified to love the freaking shinigamis, but you still have your own free will and you choose a guy with a hole through his abs. What gives?"

"Are you so unintelligent that you require an explanation?" Nemu asked. Grimmjow's smile twisted upwards in one corner.

"Let's say for a moment that I am."

"Very well. In all the ways that matter, you are my perfect man. You do not fear me or find me unusual, my father adores you, or is at least satisfied to acknowledge you as my partner of choice because you are a good test subject. Besides, your conversation makes me smile, your anger does not affect me, and is rarely if ever applied to me, your fighting is stimulating and educational, and your body is very appealing. I find no reason not to spend time with you. Does this satisfy your curiosity?" Grimmjow was silent for a few moments.

"Yeah," he said finally. "That'll do."


End file.
